246 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



determine the area of the open field relative to the area enclosed. 

 The five freeholders, who controlled 29 cottages and gardens 

 had, it appears, 15 enclosed acres, while, the land attached to the 

 forty-four customary messuages amounted to about 270 enclosed 

 acres (mainly small parcels of pasture) and about 287 acres of 

 common field, of which at least 107 acres were common meadow. 

 Of open-field arable there were, therefore, not more than 180 

 acres, or about one-fourth of the cultivated land of the township. 

 No rights of pasturage over the arable are mentioned, most 

 tenants ha\'ing " cattle gates " in Lyndeth Marsh or in le Inges, 

 and sometimes common pasture for sheep on Warton Crag and 

 Warton Marsh. 



For two Lancashire townships there are fifteenth-century 

 terriers testifying to the existence of open arable fields.^ One 

 recites a grant to Penwortham priory of lands at Farrington, 

 a hamlet southeast of Preston. By it were transferred, along 

 with a messuage, 7^ and 11 acres of arable. Of the 7^ acres, 

 5 were in a field which bore the name of the adjacent hamlet of 

 Clayton {in quodam campo vocato Claghtonfelde) , and the rest 

 in three parcels lay respectively in Brockforlong, Stainfeld- 

 more, and "ex parte boreali le Heghgate." The 11 acres lay, 

 we know not how divided, " in Longestainfeld, Brokeforlong, 

 Shortstainfeld, et le Orchards, et Catcroft medowe." ^ To 

 judge from this grant, the subdivisions of Farrington field were 

 few in number, scarcely more than a half-dozen. A like sim- 

 phcity of field division is apparent in the other terrier, despite 

 its greater length. This specifies the parcels which were sub- 

 tracted from three bovates and three acres of arable, and from 



1 It would seem at first sight as if there were useful information in a long fifteenth- 

 century survey of the lands of Sir Peter Legh at Warrington near the mouth of the 

 Mersey, published by the Chetham Society in 1849 (William Beamont, Warrington 

 in 1465). Apart from the messuages, gardens, and certain acres "in campo vocato 

 Hollay," much of the land described lay " in magno campo vocato Arpeley," or 

 in some part of it, as Le Wroe or Wetakyrs. A glance at the Warrington of today^ 

 however, shows that the reference is undoubtedly to the large tract of meadow land 

 almost encircled by the Mersey and still called Arpsley meadows. We can learn 

 little about field systems from intermixed acres of common meadow. 



* W. A. Hulton, Documents relating to the Priory oj Penwortham (Chetham Soc, 

 1853), P- 67 (22 Hen. VII). 



